


Stone Heart

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Make it Worse [4]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Buried Alive, Drugging, Episode: s05e24-25 Grave Danger, Explosions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Nick Stokes Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24255541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Not only was Nick Stokes kidnapped, buried, and told that he may as well just kill himself because there was no way out–-that was hard enough to believe on its own. The true shock came from the fact that all of those things happened, and yet…He escaped.
Relationships: Nick Stokes & Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes & Gil Grissom, Nick Stokes & Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes & Jim Brass, Nick Stokes & Sara Sidle, Warrick Brown & Nick Stokes
Series: Make it Worse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978048
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Stone Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Happy fifteenth anniversary to the best episode of television I’ve ever seen! To celebrate, I present to everyone’s reading pleasure this AU I’ve had sitting in my head for quite some time now. Definitely became longer than I anticipated, so all I have is part one for now. I hope you all enjoy!

Within the tight glass walls encapsulating his body, Nick had estimated he had about ninety minutes of air before he would start to suffocate. An estimation that had taken him more time than he’d like to admit in calculating, the numbers floating in his head were just as suffocating as the packed dirt surrounding him.

He stares at his watch. Two thirty in the morning. He’s been in the box for, at the very minimum, two hours. Half an hour spent living on stolen time.

Not quite stolen, per se, as he’s been given a limited air supply. It’s connected to a blinding light that would turn on and halt the fan’s power, depriving him of air for about two minutes before he would be plunged back into a green-lit darkness, and given the chance to breathe. He doesn’t quite know what mechanism is operating the light, or the fan, doesn’t quite know if it’s automated or controlled, but what he does know, is that he is getting absolutely _sick_ of it. 

He hates the way the bare skin of his arms is sticking to the sweat-glistened surface beneath him. He can’t stand the fact that he needs to fold one arm on top of his body, that one or both of his knees are bent uncomfortably at all times. Every time he lifts his head, it meets the lid of the box that seems closer and closer every time he tries to push back against it. It’s incredibly diminishing to have what he thought was a strong, large body shoved and contained so...easily. To have been manhandled and undressed and drugged. To be taken just because he was doing his job, _following the evidence._

But he hates nothing more than the disembodied voice on the tape that had told him, anyway he likes, _he’s going to die here._

He’s going to die without doing all of the things he’s wanted to do in life. Without getting married, having kids, starting a family. Without getting to tell his loved ones just how much they are loved by him. Without being able to tell his parents what a good job they did in raising him. Without being able to make Grissom _proud._

This has an end. This has to have an end, whether it is indeed death--though he can’t sink his teeth too far into that thought, has to resist the easy way out that rests underneath his hand, taunting him to use _his own gun_ to kill the corpse that was buried before death. 

Perhaps the end will be salvation, but not by his own will. They have to know he’s gone, though don’t they? That dumbass cop had to have stopped vomiting long enough to realize Nick was no longer at the scene. His car was still at the scene, his vest, his kit...And they know that he wouldn’t just leave, they would know something wasn’t right...

Wouldn’t they?

The light fades out, and with it, the slightest gust of air from the fan that reboots itself up gives him a short reprieve from the damp heat of the lightbulb at his feet. He slides himself down a few inches, which makes the air refreshingly cool for a few seconds before he’s flooded in an overexposed hell, and the fan’s power is depleted.

“Stop, please, just...stop…” he moans. His foot kicks at the light both out of a reflex to the shock and frustration at the intensity of heat and light. 

Perhaps it was a trick of the torture, or out of some desperate hope, but he envisions the impact of his foot causing the light to go out, breaking completely. He envisions cracks spreading all over the box. The lid falling on top of him and crushing him, dirt spilling into his mouth and suffocating him completely. 

But he also envisions...a way out. If he can just break the top of the box, if he can move fast enough, move the glass out of the way, _he could dig his way out._

He remembers seeing a movie once, where a woman punched her way out of a wooden coffin. She kept punching, and punching, and punching and was able to get out. Sure, it was a movie, but maybe it would work for him, too. And while yes, he does have an additional air supply, unlike the woman in this film...how can he be sure that someone was looking for him? He can be _anywhere,_ maybe even in another state. He has to try _something_. 

His hand brushes against his gun, and he briefly considers shooting the top of the box, but that would cause the dirt to fill _too_ fast. He’d need to do this as slow as he could, or else he’d get crushed by the pressure of the earth. 

But he still picks it up anyway, ensuring that the safety was still on, and inserts it in the front of his pants. 

His other hand brushes against the tape recorder--valuable evidence, he should take it with him, in case he doesn’t find his way back to wherever he was buried. He pops the cassette tape out of the player, places it into his pocket. 

He also picks up the remaining unlit glow sticks, and sticks them next to the gun in his pants. Perhaps he can use them as a beacon, maybe the LVPD had organized a helicopter, like they did for the case a few years ago for another woman who was buried alive, who was given just hours to live after a ransom demand.

Was there a ransom for his life, he wondered? Would the department even pay it?

The light turns off, and he takes a deep breath. He tries to relieve the nervous tension in his body, flexes out his hands splayed on the glass in front of him. A few seconds later, the light turns on again, and he focuses on the glass in front of him, holding back dirt. 

He balls up a fist and punches into the glass, and just like before, during his initial panic, nothing happens. 

He punches again.

And again.

And again. 

_And again._

His knuckles are reddening, daring to split, but in the light, he can see just the slightest of cracks in the mess of scratches on the lid. _It was working._

The light goes off, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps punching with his right fist, then brings up his left one, alternating between the two. His breathing is getting faster, harder, but he can’t stop. He won’t suffocate just yet, anyway, not with the fan by his side.

But he does realize that his fists alone won’t last forever, especially when he sees a smudge of blood above him transferring from his open skin. He takes the gun out of his pants, starts to use the butt for more force. 

As the light turns back on again, a small stream of dirt trickles from the expanding crack in the glass. He pauses for a moment, to catch his mind up with his breath. A plague of doubts synapses through his brain, he starts to wonder if he really should go through with this--what if the box fills with dirt before he can even climb out of it?

But there’s no going back now, the dirt was going to pour into the box like sand in an hourglass, and he can’t stop it, even if he tries to plug it with his hands. It’s now a race against time.

After all, what does he have to lose?

Adrenaline builds in his system, he kicks his feet at the bottom of the box, feels the tingle of the waking numbness. He uses the frustration of the pins and needle sensation to keep punching.

The light turns on again, but he can’t lose focus even as he flinches. The cracks are spreading faster, further now that he is using an added tool, a sizable chunk breaks away. He sticks the gun back into his pants, starts to pry the edges of the new hole apart. Dirt keeps pouring in faster, in a greater volume, a small pile even develops on top of his chest. He can taste the dry soil as he lifts his head up to get a better view while he evens out the pile by swiping it off of his shirt. 

But as soon as the dirt is off his chest, more falls in its place, and it’s in this moment he realizes the dirt’s not going to just...stop. He won’t see the sun in the sky--wait, no, it’s still nighttime, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter, he won’t see the moon anyway if his mouth fills with the same amount of dirt that is the foundation of the mountain on his chest. 

He takes a deep breath, while he still can, and turns himself on his side while he works to untuck his shirt and lift it above his head, without removing it completely. He ties the ends of his sleeves and the up-turned bottom into a knot, effectively creating a pliable air bubble around his head.

Though the sound of the fan had already started to sputter into silence, between the ever-pouring dirt filling the sides of the container and the fabric around his ears, he can no longer hear the fan. 

He feels like there’s no air at all anymore, again living on stolen time. He needs to _move._

Blindly, he starts to work on spreading the hole, pulling apart the shards and punching the fragile edges. He feels his nails split with the glass, feels the sting and flow of blood as he pries and cries. All the while, he’s still kicking his feet, still shoving the neverending dirt away, clawing above him--he sits up, and fully expecting to once again smash his forehead against the glass wall--

He doesn’t.

Nick would laugh if he felt like he had the air to spare, but instead he just focuses on sitting up, which is easier said than done as he risks tearing the shirt, but his hands go first. His arms take most of the damage, as does his exposed torso on the jagged edges of glass.

The slices sting, but as he feels his feet standing on the remnants of the box, he feels something...pinching his skin. Crawling, even. 

He prays they aren’t scorpions. 

He does his best to keep moving, it’s almost like swimming--which he admittedly hasn’t done in _years._ But in water, bodies always move--whether the swimmer is moving or not, bodies will just...float in the absence of active movement.

In this sea of dirt, however, in the absence of active movement, his body begins to compress from the pressure of the earth. His chest is caving in on itself, his lungs shrinking, his ribs cracking. It was easy to move through the stream of loose dirt as it poured into the box beneath him, but now that the dirt has caught up to him, his body feels...stuck. Vertically, at least, he’ll count that as a win, but his movements are as slow as if he were moving through wet cement. 

The air in his makeshift bubble is fast depleting, too. The taste of cotton in his mouth is tainted with the bland, rough texture of dirt as the neck of his shirt wasn’t tight enough around his neck, and dirt is still able to find its way through the knots of the shirt.

He keeps reaching, he feels a root--or what he hopes is a root, it doesn’t seem to move, so it had to be a root. He grabs on it, and is able to pull himself up, continuing to kick his feet, finding his footing in the shifting sea. It’s at this point he begins to wonder how far deep he is--he could have been ten feet deep, for all knew. Could be in the desert, could be in a garden. He can’t stop to think about that right now.

He keeps going.

He also feels another root, but it doesn’t feel as...textured. Wider, plasticized. He does his best to keep it with him, vaguely wondering if it was part of the wiring of the light, and for a moment, his heart plunges as he worries that maybe he had been swimming in the wrong direction--what if he is just going deeper?

Nick chooses not to believe that, and keeps going.

He can’t tell how long it took him, but after what felt like hours, his right hand reaches up, and suddenly feels cold. Ice cold. The air stings at his bitten and bleeding hand, but the pain had never felt like such a relief. His left hand follows shortly after with the plastic cord, which he lets go of to begin working on freeing his head from his shirt. His right hand, meanwhile, gets started clawing the rest of his body onto the ledge of the surface, and out of the earth’s depths.

As soon as he feels the cold air against his face, he opens his mouth, and draws in a long, deep inhale of fresh air. He tries to remain calm about it, but his body goes into an overcompensating overload, rasping and gasping and coughing. He feels like a plastic bottle re-inflating after being crushed, as if a giant hand had wrapped itself around him and squeezed the air out of him.

As the sensation fades to a more tolerable pain level, he hones the rest of the energy he most certainly doesn’t have to pull himself completely out of the ground, and rolls over on his back, staring up at the night sky. He clutches the shirt to his chest though he doesn’t mind the freezing temperature of the air, it’s better than the humid heat he endured in his glass prison.

He trembles, he twitches, but he also smiles. As soon as his ribs feel like they settled back in their cage--he even laughs. A long, almost maniacal laugh, followed by a curse in disbelief. Not only was Nick Stokes kidnapped, buried, and told that he may as well just kill himself because there was no way out--that was hard enough to believe on its own. The true shock came from the fact that all of those things happened, and yet…

_He escaped._

* * *

“What are you doing, Nicky?” Warrick mutters as he watches Nick stare up at the camera. They had assumed that Nick wasn’t aware of the camera, but maybe he was finally able to spot it in the barrage of packed dirt in front of him. He selfishly dares to wonder if Nick is somehow clued in to the fact that _they’re_ the ones watching him, his team. His friends. His _family._

He watches as Nick pulls up a gun, examining it, and Warrick’s heart rate spikes up while his eyes dare to bulge out of their sockets.

“He’s got a gun!” He shouts, not even bothering to mask his panic. The bastard that did this gave his best friend a gun--probably Nick’s own gun, since it wasn’t at the scene--and _Oh God,_ he thinks, _what if Nick is going to use it?_ “Gris--!”

Grissom rushes into the room, having heard Warrick’s call from the hallway. The rest of the team follows suit from their various idle positions. Everyone had been waiting for follow up from Brass on the package delivery guy, they were at a stand still, trying to find menial tasks to perform to keep distracted. Warrick was the one who stayed in the lab as first watch, an unspoken task that would be cycled through the rest of the CSIs. The only comfort in this situation, was that they could watch Nick, make sure he was okay--or at least, as okay as one could be while trapped in a box, underground.

Judging by the gun in his hand, however, things were most definitely _not_ okay.

The gun vanishes out of the frame, and he pulls up a tape recorder, removing the tape to examine it.

“He’s not...He can’t be,” Warrick mutters, thousands of scenarios in which Nick would use the gun and tape to leave a message before ending it altogether, running through his head at a rapid speed. “Nicky...no…”

But Nick seems to toss the tape recorder to the side, and the tape follows the gun out of view. His hands remain there for a few moments before finding themselves on each side of Nick’s face. His body wriggles, his hands move closer to the camera, and the feed cuts out.

As Warrick slams the “watch” button and the feed returns, Nick’s staring at the surface in front of him. While the camera gives an awkward angle that makes the expression on Nick’s face a little difficult to read, Warrick knows what it is, he’s seen that expression before. Determination.

The determination he got when he was close to closing a case, catching a suspect. The determination he showed when he was put under scrutiny, defending himself from both colleagues and complete strangers. The determination in their friendly wagers, their stupid video games. The determination in his stubbornness, which sometimes got under Warrick’s skin, but right now, he misses it.

Nick is showing that determination now, but what could he need to be so determined about? Is this just some moment of assertion, to himself, that he is going to hold on, that he is going to make it out of there? He probably isn’t aware of the twelve hour countdown--though now Warrick wonders what was on that tape, but he already made it this far, far past Grissom’s calculated time limit, and Warrick wishes he could just tell Nick to keep holding on…

Nick’s fist punches at the screen.

Again.

And again

And again.

And _again_.

" _What are you doing, Nicky?”_ Warrick asks again, louder. He sees Grissom and Catherine flanking him on either side, Sara and Greg are off to the side of the room, staring at the larger monitor on the wall.

They all watch as their view of Nick becomes blocked, until the image goes black entirely. A couple of seconds later, they are back to the “watch” screen.

Warrick clicks the button, but the screen is still black.

“That son of a bitch!” Warrick shouts. He storms away from the computer, resisting the urge to just punch it. A tense silence fills the air for a minute, as they all take time to figure out what just happened.

“But, maybe--maybe this was Nick getting out.” Greg is the first to speak. “Maybe, he punched his way out, you know, like that one movie--”

“Yeah, and _maybe_ he got crushed to death by the dirt filling into the box!” Warrick spits out. “We don’t know how deep that hole is--”

“Hey, I’m just sayin', Nick’s a fighter--”

“No matter how strong he is, no human being could--”

“What was he supposed to do, just lie there? And wait?”

“Yes! Because at least he was _safe_!” Warrick shouts, and Greg can’t help but laugh coldly.

“Y-you call _that_ safe?”

“At least he had an air supply--”

“We have _no_ idea where he is, Warrick! He could have just escaped--”

“ _If_ he made it to the surface--”

“And assuming the kidnapper isn’t still there,” Sara intervenes.

“Exactly!”

“Why are you both being so pessimistic about this?”

“Because it should have been me!” Warrick growls. 

“Okay, enough!” Catherine cries out. She places herself in front of Warrick, who’s anger is rubbed out of his eyes to reveal his despair.

“It should have been me,” he repeats, his voice softening in the burden of guilt. “We-we flipped a _coin_ for that trash run--”

“Hey, Nick wasn’t taken because of the flip of a coin, okay?”

Silence falls over the team once more, Warrick holds his head in his hands as Catherine puts a hand on his shoulder. Sara bounces her leg, her lips pursed into her fingers. Greg’s eyes are closed, head leaning backwards against the wall, before he breaks the silence again.

“He’s going to be okay.”

“What, are you psychic now, Sanders?” Warrick scoffs. 

“Maybe he is.” Grissom interjects, his voice as firm and certain as ever. The only one still looking at the screen, he nods his head towards it. The black image is gone, and they are now faced with an image of Nick, his dirt-covered face scrunched up as he looks into the lens at a newly awkward, fish-bowl angle. Once he realizes what he’s holding, his face falls into one of anger, disgust even, and the camera drops.

They can just barely see his face, but it looks as if he is almost...smiling? His shirt is off, he has bumps and slices on his arms, evident only by the streaks of blood painted over the dirt that coats his body.

He raises up his hand, sticking up his middle finger at the camera, before his foot lifts and stomps on the camera entirely, leaving the CSIs on a black screen once more.

Grissom can’t help but smile with pride.

* * *

“Fuck,” Nick mutters as he tries to stand up. He had stuck a glow stick in the dirt, trying to use it as leverage. Every part of his legs feel wobbly, his knees buckle the second he lifts them from the ground. Sensation hasn’t quite fully returned to his limbs, though he does also feel a burning cramp in his calves. He settles for sitting on his knees until he can completely regain control of his body. His breathing is still abnormal, trying to re-grow his lungs by flooding them with oxygen, though each molecule of air scrapes against his throat like the glass he crawled out of. He wipes his eyes, feeling the burning, pricking of tears at the corner of his eyelids. 

He can hear soft wind rustle the trees that towered around him, he reckons that he’s in some sort of forest? Although the trees seem to be...organized rather than spread out in an organic way. He spots a few of them that have a ceramic base. He hears the calls of insects, the hooting of owls. He finally looks at his watch. Three in the morning.

As he continues to recover, he pulls on the cord he had found on his journey from the center of the earth. On one end is a plastic bag, which had only been covered in a few inches of dirt, easily uncovered. One the other end of the near six-foot long cord is something small, plastic, that must have been on top of the lid. It has a glassy surface at the tip, like a camera lens. He stares into it with a scrunched face, and then looks at the two pipes on either side of him, sticking out of the ground. Though his head throbs, and it’s hard to think, it doesn’t take much effort to realize the connection.

Light, fan, camera.

“Son of a bitch!” Nick curses as he drops the camera to the ground. His anger and disgust is enough to lift him up, and he sneers down at the miniscule device at his feet.

Despite the nausea swirling in his stomach, dredging up painful memories of holes in ceilings, tapes of non-consented recordings, he can’t help but smile. Because now he’s _aware_ of it, and it doesn’t matter any longer. _He got out._

He sticks up his middle finger at the camera, a final act of spite, before he crushes it beneath his foot.

He examines the contents of the plastic bag, a cell phone, presumably transmitting the video feed, which makes him feel like his insides are spilling out--because where was that feed being broadcast? Just to the kidnapper? Or to the rest of the world?

He derails that train of thought by switching tracks to try and exit back into the cellular device’s calling services--but the device is rigged so that he can’t. Still, emergency services have to work, right? 

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“My name is Nick Stokes,” he pauses for a moment, mostly to catch his breath and compose himself, secretly hoping that dropping his name would be enough for the operator to send the entire department his way.

He knows it doesn’t work like that, of course. He’s not famous. In Texas, maybe that would have been enough. 

“I work with the Las Vegas Crime Lab a-and I was...I was kidnapped but I escaped and I need help.”

“Do you know where you are located, Mr. Stokes?”

“Uhm…N-no…” his voice quivers. “There’s just...so many trees, b-but it’s not like a forest, it’s more like I don’t know, an orchard or something…”

“Can you get to the main road? Is there a sign?”

Nick spins around, no roads in his line of vision. 

“Give me a minute, I can find one,” he pants, and he starts to stumble forward, though he falls to his knees after a few steps, he can’t hold back a yelp in pain. 

“Sir, are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”

“I’m fine, I...I probably...will need...medical…” Nick grunts as he gets to his feet again. He keeps walking. 

“Will need? Can you please elaborate?”

“Gonna be hard to believe...but I was buried alive.”

“...Buried alive?”

“Yeah,” Nick gulps. 

“And you...escaped?” The operator's voice is laced with doubt, he knows how crazy it seems and he hopes this doesn’t just sound like some sort of prank call. 

“Yeah. Listen, is there a way you’re able to like, triangulate this call?”

“This is not television, sir, it does not work this way.”

Nick has never wished he was a television character more in his life. Television characters get to survive at the end of the episode...unless this was a season finale.

But even then, there’s still a chance.

Right?

“Ok, then transfer me to the A/V lab?”

“This is an emergency dispatch, sir, and I am not a switchboard operator. Unless you can give me a location, I am going to be unable to help you.” 

Nick mouths a swear in frustration as he frantically looks for something, _anything_ that would tell him where he is, and a few minutes later, just in luck, he manages to find a golf cart with a faded logo embedded on its backside--

“Flora Nevada Nursery! I’m at Flora Nevada Nursery!” he shouts so loud that his voice cracks, daring to just disappear altogether.

Just like the phone call, he realizes, that had long since dropped. 

He throws the phone to the ground in frustration, realizing it’s as dead of an end as the straight path to nowhere he was walking on. He allows himself a moment to scream using whatever power his vocal chords have left--which is not much, and the scream is more of a strained screech--but he pulls himself together with a wipe of his face. 

There has to be an office, which would have a properly functioning phone. He tries to start the cart but there’s no key in the ignition, of course, and even if there was, he’d still have to navigate the maze of trees, with no signs pointing him through the botanist’s playground. 

He looks back from where he came, can still just see the pipes sticking out of the ground even in the blurs of his pulsing vision. Can still see the large, imposing backhoe that he _knows_ isn’t actually following him, but somehow he thinks that it is, that it’s going to slam the crane full of dirt on top of him, over and over keeping him in a loop of burial and escape until he just gives up altogether--

He starts to walk forward again, picking up his pace as he realizes that while the machine was still stationary, his kidnapper most definitely wasn’t. A sudden wave of panic gives him the idea to crack a glow stick to leave as a marker of both “this is where I started” in case he gets lost, and “this is where I _should not_ return if I know what’s good for me.” 

Although...leaving markers could also give the kidnapper an idea of where he is heading. 

But it’s still worth it, if he does manage to make it to the office before his assailant returns.

Besides, the box would still be evidence, wouldn’t it? Would need to be dug up. Processed. Logged. He could easily lead the team to the location, save them the trouble of doing a comb-through of the entire property. 

Looking ahead, he still doesn’t see much of anything but trees. He drops another glow stick, and makes a turn.

More trees.

He keeps walking, hearing only the sounds of his own rugged breathing and ambient noise of the night, the leaves shaking in the gentle breeze--

Breeze.

It’s much colder in the earlier hours of a Nevada morning.

Very cold.

So cold that there’s bumps rising all over his skin, his fingers are shaking, and not just from over-exhaustion. The cold seeps _underneath_ the folds in his split knuckles, underneath his split fingernails, his teeth chatter and he unfurls the shirt that was coiled in his fist, still mostly intact. His fingers slowly untie the knots, it takes more effort than he’d care to admit given the tips of his fingers had been sanded down, but eventually he’s able to put his shirt back on and feel at least _some_ warmth. 

He drops another glow stick and makes another turn.

He starts to sing to himself, keep his mind active. The song reminds him of how things were before, though he does his best not to dwell on thinking of how they’ll never be like that again. The trees are blurring together and he wonders if he’s on a path at all, if he’s moving at all, if this is just some oxygen-deprived nightmare he’s suffering as he suffocates in an over-lit glass coffin buried deep beneath the earth. 

_“The Devil's had my body, now may the Good Lord take my soul..."_

Yet he also feels as if he’s moving _too_ fast, after such a long period of non-movement, even walking at a snail’s pace makes him think he’s flying. 

_"So do not try to find me, for I will not be found..."_

It's a freeing feeling, he has to admit, to be able to walk on his own two feet again. To not be cramped inside a box that was certainly not made to fit. 

_"I'm gonna keep this stake alive...I'm headed out of town…”_

He smiles, he had never made it that far in the song before.

The song ends but he begins again, singing louder, when he thinks he hears another set of footsteps beyond his own, hoping his singing would start a conversation.

It doesn’t.

“H-hello?” Nick cuts through the song. “Someone there?”

There’s no response, but he hears the crunch of a twig, which makes him spin around, and then he hears something...crackling? Electricity? Maybe he’s closer to the road than he thought, maybe a power line went down--he looks at the sky, the clouds have long since cleared since it rained early last night--he looks back in front of him, _swears_ he sees a shadow running through the trees--

He starts to run, too. 

“Help!” he shouts. “Please! Stop! I-I need some help!” 

If it’s not the kidnapper, and someone who can actually help him, maybe his broken yelling will tell them to assume a much more low key, cautious approach, that would calm him down, that would give him the certainty, the assurance, “hey, it’s okay, you’re safe now” in this most uncertain peril. 

And if it is the kidnapper stalking him through the pseudo-woods, well, at least he’s trying to get away this time. At least he can try to properly fight back this time. He has more of a chance to stop another abduction, now that he’s anticipating being taken from behind.

Fool him once, shame on him. Fool him twice, shame on them. 

He draws his gun as he continues to run, dropping the second to last glow stick, realizing too little too late that he had made so many turns, this one would be a fallacy to anybody trying to follow his trail. 

He’s so distracted by his panicked blunder and the heightening dread that someone is, in fact, following him that he doesn’t notice the large mound of dirt that he falls into.

Or rather, a large mound of _fire._

Every pore of his skin is ignited with a burning itch, he feels the same crawling sensation he had felt on his way out of the earth, only this time, covering his _entire_ body. He belts out a scream he didn’t even know he was capable of from deep within his lungs, and three words that had been drilled into his head at a very young age when faced with a fire.

_Stop, drop, and roll._

He had stopped the minute he had dropped to the dirt, having fallen face first into the mound, moving his body is an intense feat as his entire chest feels like it’s a gaping hole. He feels his rib bones puncturing his skin with even the slightest of movement, daring to rip through. Still, he manages to roll, but the flames aren’t extinguished. Tens and hundreds and millions of minuscule teeth latch themselves onto his clothes, his hair, his skin, he feels his insides boil, feels his heart work itself into overdrive as he can imagine the venom blending with the blood in his veins. He’s being torn apart, centimeter by centimeter and not just that, the fire is _devouring_ him. 

Small pieces of his skin—his _flesh_ , torn away. Pieces of himself he’ll never get back. Then again he supposed that there’s even more pieces of himself that were left behind in that coffin, but he has absolutely no time to think about that while he’s being _eaten alive._

He somehow manages to roll himself out of the mound, out of the fire even though a few cinders remain to feast on his flesh. When he opens his eyes, spitting out the unwelcome invaders that had made their way into his mouth, he sees that it wasn’t a _real_ fire at all, but a disrupted swarm of fire ants _._

He wipes his nose, digs his fingers into his ears to scrape the insects out before he scampers to his feet--easier said than done, he nearly collapses again but hunches over, resting on his fragile knees. He allows his breath to return to some semblance of normalcy before he brushes his clothing off. 

“What...the... _fuck!”_ he curses angrily when he is able to see the fire ant mound for what it really is. He heaves as he takes a nervous gander at the rest of his surroundings, and a smile spreads on his face when he sees it—a wooden building with the same designation at the top, “Flora Nevada Nursery.”

“Thank God,” he sighs as he runs towards the office. The door is locked but he wastes no time in using his gun to break the window next to it and unlock the door from the inside. 

The first thing he sees is a bottle of water that had been left out on the reception counter. He doesn’t even care that someone else might have drank from it previously, he downs it in one ferocious chug, most of the water spilling out through the corners of his mouth down and down his shirt but decency and dignity is the least of his worries.

He moans as the emptied plastic crinkles under his fingers that dig into the sides of the bottle with the most force he could muster, which is not a whole lot, even with his minimal re-hydration. Instead, the bottle falls to the floor out of his hands and he fumbles for the phone. Presses the same three buttons, the three worded-name dancing on his tongue ready for him to just blurt out the minute the operator picks up--

Nobody answers the call.

He tries to dial again.

No sound.

The line is dead. 

He tries to flip the light switch, closing his eyes in anticipation, maybe he won’t flinch this time--

The light doesn’t turn on. 

He tries to turn on the computer.

Nothing. A blank screen. 

“N-no…” he cries. He’s not even angry, more than anything, he’s just dejected. He cradles his hands together, fighting the urge to scratch at the red welts all over his skin as he allows himself to collapse into a chair. 

It’s almost three-thirty now, perhaps he could just wait for the nursery to open up for business...he doesn’t think it’s a weekend; he’s truthfully forgotten what day of the week it is. 

And if it is, maybe he can just find the main road after he allows himself a little time to recover, and he can walk to the nearest gas station or hitchhike or--

His eyes are closed as he slumps into the seat, his fingers dancing as they lightly brush the welts on his arms when he thinks he saw a light pass over his eyes. 

“Hello?” he asks, getting to his feet with his gun drawn. 

The light passes over again, but this time, it remains dead center, and he covers his hands in front of him, squinting in the bright exposure, and _oh no,_ he’s most definitely back in the box, the fire ants infiltrated after his failed attempt to break out--

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a gruff voice calls to him. A figure in front of the headlights of what Nick discerns is a vehicle parked right outside of the office. 

“Y-you first! Who are you?” Nick commands, raising his gun up at the shadowed figure. “Do you work here?”

“Yeah, I own the place,” the man replies. Nick’s heart falls to his feet but he can’t feel guilty, after all, given the circumstances. He lowers his gun. 

“Listen, sir, this is going to sound crazy but you got to believe me--” Nick has time to think about, but not enough to laugh about the irony that he sounds just like the idiots he has to interview on a daily basis, “--I was, was kidnapped a-and brought here and...buried...and I got out and I needed to use the phone, but the phone is dead. I work with the Las Vegas Police Department, they’ll reimburse you.”

The man remains silent for a moment, while Nick shifts uncomfortably, his heart rising back up as he tries to make himself look as sympathetic as possible. 

“Buried, huh?” the man asks after a solid minute of silence.

“Yeah,” Nick chuckles. “Hard to believe, I know.”

“You look like you’re bleeding there. See you found the infamous ant hill, too. C’mon, son, let’s get you to hospital,” the old man waves his arm, beckoning towards Nick. Nick’s heart continues to pound against his chest. 

“You don’t g-got a cell phone, or somethin’?” he asks, his accent thick. “I shouldn’t leave...shouldn’t leave the…”

Crime scene.

 _His_ crime scene.

“It’ll be okay. Promise. We’ll get you to a hospital, call the cops the minute we get a phone. And tell you what, I won’t even press charges on you.”

“O-okay,” Nick nods after careful consideration. He walks hesitantly towards the passengers side as he keeps his eyes on the elderly man who falls into a fit of coughs. 

“Excuse me,” the man mutters, taking out a white cloth from his suit jacket and turning away from Nick’s view while he climbs into the seat. 

“Seat belt,” the man reminds him once he puts himself behind the steering wheel, the first time Nick could get a good view of the man. Elderly, balding. His stern voice of authority almost reminds Nick of his grandfather. 

“Never uh, never got your name?” Nick muses to distract himself from the clicking of the seat belt into the slot, a sound that somehow feels like a nail being hammered into a coffin. 

“Walter Gordon.”

“My-my name's Nick Stokes. Sorry again about the break in, d-didn’t mean ta give you such trouble.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” 

Gordon twists the knob to his radio, raising the volume of the radio. Old sixties rock music. He feels like he’s in the station wagon with his father, on their way home from an entire day spent walking miles through a forest preserve, the full moon acting as a beacon that brings them home. The windows down, his head leaning against the door frame, his hair wafting in the breeze that skims over his face. Precious oxygen he had taken for granted back then, he now realizes, though in the past, his hand was wrapped around the knob to the window crank, his fingers imprinted with the striations of the plastic. Desperation, as if the window would roll up if he didn’t hold it in place, that the feeling of freedom would be robbed at a moment’s notice. Or just childish boredom, his tiny fingers wrapping around the handle just because something about it felt right?

_“I see a bad moon risin’...”_

Nick dips and stretches his head to observe the night sky, littered in fading scattered stars, but no moon in immediate sight. 

No wayward beacon to bring him home. 

No air either, the windows in the SUV are closed, he’s effectively in a bigger box than he escaped from. He feels suddenly isolated, the only soul around other than the old one next to him.

The seat belt across his chest is too tight. Too restrictive, it keeps him from getting a full view of the sky, to see if maybe they were driving the other way from the moon.

He shifts his position uncomfortably, and even the slightest movement of his chest puffing in a sharp inhale makes him fall into the limit of the belt, he jerks backwards, and his fingers inch their way towards the control button on the car’s door.

“Mind if I lower the window?” He croaks, far more hoarse, more _weak_ sounding than he would have liked. Last thing he needs is some stranger’s pity on him because he sounds like he just got back from a rock concert. 

“It’s okay, kid, _relax_ . _Breathe,”_ The older man speaks, loudly and slowly, in a calming tone but no...it’s not that calming. It’s almost _mocking_ the idea of his comfort, and sounds too similar to…

_Breathe quick. Breathe slow._

His eyes meet the rear-view mirror. 

He tries to tell himself it’s a coincidence, as suddenly he’s hog-tied in the trunk, staring up at the same tinted window, wincing at the red light flashing over his face. His hands behind his back. Vulnerable. Helpless. 

He shakes his head out of the flashback with a sharp breath. 

He slowly moves his head to look at the driver, praying that he was mistaken, that he’s so shaken up that he somehow thinks that this is the man who had kidnapped him just hours ago…

But the menacing look on the old man’s face says otherwise.

The car slows down, veering to the side of the road.

“I wouldn’t try anything stupid if I were you,” the man warns, completely dropping his soft charade as the car comes to a halt. 

One hand wraps around the door handle.

His other hand is slowly reaching to un-clip his seat belt, intent to grab his gun immediately after. 

_“Don’t go ‘round tonight, it’s bound to take your life…”_

Just as Nick’s about to press the release, his hand is grabbed and pulled away, jammed between his own thighs with a firm grip, he can feel his forearm brush against the gun stuck down his pants--which is then grabbed by the man who’s now leaning into Nick, using his other hand to bring up a white cloth. Even before it reaches Nick’s face, his nostrils tingle in the familiar scene of ether. The fabric is jammed not just over, but _into_ Nick’s mouth, so far that it touches the back of his throat--as he tries to expel the cloth from his mouth, he brings up his other hand in attempt to fend off his attacker, but his hand is just batted away, lands against the glass of the passenger’s side window, unable to fight back against the butt of the gun that _whacks_ into his forehead, breaking his porcelain skin and somehow into his brain, the world tilts and his ears ring.

_“I hear the voice of rage and ruin…”_

Nick’s head bobs back against the seat, he leans forward and the seat belt catches him, though fails to catch the cloth in his mouth as it falls out of his mouth and into his lap. He groans as the air is tight and bitter, every hyper-inhale offering him a small reprieve of fresh air before it’s corrupted by the alcohol that burns his throat, his tongue, his lining of his cheeks. His head throbs from the impact of his gun, his teeth tingle as he feels blood trickle down, curving over his cheeks and into his mouth. He tries to move his hands, but his body feels as if it’s in slow motion, though the rest of the world is moving normally...if not a little faster. He can’t even breathe fast enough to keep up, as he sways in the motionless car. His chest feels as crushed as it was underground, a large gaping void threatening to swirl him down a drain into unconsciousness. 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Gordon huffs, tapping Nick’s cheek with every word which keeps him from slipping away entirely. He reaches to open the glove compartment in front of Nick’s lap, revealing a bag of zip ties and cloths and a bottle of what Nick presumes to be the same ether that stained the rag stuffed into his mouth. 

“Noooooo, please…” Nick moans, when a zip tie is removed and the compartment is closed. He holds up his hands with the intent of pushing the oncoming threat away, but as they float in the air, the man simply wraps them with the plastic, and inserts the end through the hole. Nick’s heart starts and stops with each passing of the notches through the loop, and even when his wrists are snugly smothered together, the zip keeps zipping, he’s worried that his hands are going to be sliced clean off from his wrists.

_“I hope you are quite prepared to die…”_

“Just...let...me...go…” Nick mutters as the man releases his hands, and they drop down in front of him like an anchor tethering him to the bottom of the sea.

“I bet you’re thinking you should have stayed in that coffin, huh, son?” the man chuckles coldly as Nick tries to break out of the restraint, grunting in exasperated effort. He tries--and fails--to suppress frustrated cries as he realizes that he just _can’t._ He doesn’t notice that the man reaches into the back seat, and pulls up a roll of crime scene tape. 

“Didn’t have time to pick up masking tape, but this should do the trick…” Gordon grunts, rubbing the front of the tape with the infused rag that was previously in Nick’s mouth. He tries once again to lift his hands, but all he’s able to do is pull his wrists against the tightened bond between his thighs and grit his teeth in teary frustration.

Nick winces at the slow twine of the plastic tape being ripped off of the roll before it’s placed tightly over his lips, and partially over his nose. The man holds it there as Nick tries to move his head, wrestle out of the muzzle but the most he’s able to do is get the tape to slide off of his nose. His breathing is limited enough as it is, but with one of his airways fully blocked, his struggle shrinks to non-existence, and he redirects his focus to breathing through his nose while the tape is tied into a tight knot behind his head. The taste of the ether infiltrates and overtakes his mouth, his tongue is sent into an unfortunate frenzy of trying to scrape off the drug with his teeth--but it just comes into contact with the bitter, bland tape and retracts inwards, bringing the vile taste with it. His vision, meanwhile, is clouding and diminishing. 

_"There’s a bad moon on the rise…”_

The dark, moonless, starless sky overtakes the entire car, and he fades into a sleepless void.

**Author's Note:**

> songs featured:  
> "Ain't No Grave" by Johnny Cash (title)  
> "Lucky Too" by Bob Neuwirth  
> "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival


End file.
